LA fires updates: Trump makes wild claims about California wildfires and snubs Newsom ahead of visit

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will join President Donald Trump for his emergency briefing on Southern California’s January wildfires.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was not included in the list of participants released by the White House on Friday morning.

“My message to him is that the second largest city in the country has been devastated, and we cannot be okay and move forward without federal support,” Bass told The Washington Post.

Eugene Escarrega, a Pasadena resident, spoke with ABC 7 as he was grabbing sand bags at a local fire station.

“The problem is right now is there’s a big pile of debris in front of the drain system,” he said. “I’m afraid if they don’t get that today, by tomorrow, we’re going to have a problem. If the water comes straight down, it’s going to come right through my front door.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says her brother lost his house in the Palisades fire.

“The loss that you’re going through, I share indirectly. It’s hit my family too,” she said at a meeting of the Pacific Palisades Community Council. “My brother, who has lived in Malibu for 40 years, been through many fires, evacuated many times — this time didn’t get away.”

A patchwork of municipal water systems feeds Los Angeles, drawing water from 200 different utilities. They support a system designed to handle lower-level, urban fires — but not multiple large-scale wildfires descending from the hills.

Faced with multiple wildfires moving as fast as five football fields per minute, the system buckled.

While every bit of water helps, using fire hydrants and water hoses isn’t an effective method of battling “multiple onslaughts of fire under high wind conditions,” Faith Kearns, a water and wildfire expert with the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, told Axios.

Hurricane-force Santa Ana winds have driven this month’s fires.

“Is it going to save a whole neighborhood under those kinds of … high wind conditions? Probably not,” she said.

With reporting from Josh Marcus

The Border 2 fire continues to burn on Otay Mountain, west of Doghouse Junction on Friday.

“Winds are forecast to decrease later in the morning and shift direction, blowing east and northeast by early this afternoon. This change may cause smoke impacts in areas east and northeast of Otay Mountain, including Dulzura and Jamul. Winds are expected to blow the smoke towards the east-northeast through early Friday evening,” the district said.

Ground level smoke impacts are likely near and to the west and southwest of the fire through Friday morning, where levels of harmful particulate matter may “reach unhealthful levels.”

“In areas where you smell smoke it is advised that you limit physical/outdoor activity. If possible, stay indoors to limit your exposure to fine particulate matter and ozone, especially those residents with respiratory or heart disease, the elderly, and children,” the district warned.

President Donald Trump claimed Friday that if California had “released the water”: “You might not have even had a fire.”

Media outlets have previously reported that the president may be referring to the Columbia River, which flows from Canada into the Northwest and the Pacific Ocean. But, experts have said that Trump’s remarks are ”uninformed,” and that there is no infrastructure to send that water southward.

One of his first executive actions during his second term was a memo directing his administration to find ways to reroute water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to the rest of California.

While the state had initially argued his plan would harm the ecosystem, water also flows into the ocean to keep the delta fresh enough to export water to the south, according to UC Davis professor Jay Lund.

California says there is no shortage of water in the region, that all reservoirs are full, and that water is available.

The continued risk of deadly wildfires in the region is driven by strong Santa Ana winds and an extended period of drought. Climate change has made wildfires worse and more frequent.